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]]>I recently purchased a 3D printer. It is a Creality Ender 3 unit and is quite bare bones. Though for less than $200, it is perfect for learning more about the process and techniques required.

As any new owner of a 3D Printer, I’ve downloaded quite a few models from Thingiverse and other sites and cranked them out. There is quite a learning curve to climb when it comes to creating new models. To help with this ascent, I started playing with Tinkercad and wanted to create name plates for my team at the office. It took about 20 hours of printing, but I was successful and everyone liked their name plates.

I decided that I should also create a name plate for The Daughter. She has been a big fan of some of the 3D printed doo dads I’ve made. So I used the same approach as I did with my co-workers, creating a block, and then dragging individual letters over the block and creating a void with their shapes. Here’s her nameplate.

Looks great, right? Well, The Daughter has a particular way that she signs her name. She dots her i’s very clearly. She also punctuates her name with a period. She is 5 (and three quarters). She was not taught to do this, but its a cute quirk and I’ll miss it when its gone.

When I handed her the name plate, she looked at it and said, “Dad, where’s the period?”

What a great question! Rather than burst her bubble, she helped me properly size and align the period that I had left off and we re-printed it.

I’m still not sure why she didn’t request to add the dots above the i’s, but I’ll keep that to myself.

Thanks for reading.

Sidenote: Greetings to the handful of you that still read this blog. And thank you for not deleting your RSS subscription after 4.5 years of no new content. I truly am horribly inconsistent about adding new stuff to this here website. Expect that to continue.

Task management is a big deal to me. Nothing has been more crucial to my productivity and ability to get things done than having an efficient system to track all the things that needs doing.

Since sometime in 2008, that system has been Remember The Milk. At the time, it was regarded as one of the best task managers available. During my use, I’ve completed 25,526 tasks. Today, it still does a great job managing tasks.

But for the bulk of my time as an Remember the Milk user, development and innovation has flattened and the app is starting to feel stale. I wonder how the business stays in business by only having unlimited mobile sync as a premium feature (a rather kludgy one at that). I have long hoped that subtasks, project templates and a few other bells and whistles would be added into the feature set, but have been left with only hope and no forward progress.

More than anything, I have become increasingly concerned that the email message informing me that Remember The Milk is ceasing operations is not far off.

To not be left in the lurch and scrambling for a replacement tool, I set about researching alternate tools. The tool that came up most often by a large margin was Todoist.

I was quite intrigued by Todoist’s feature set. They offer subtasks and subprojects. Mobile sync is included by default, as it should be. Project colors are a nice bonus. The layout feels fresher. They are regularly introducing new features like IFTTT integration and PowerApp. Their stats and karma feature would add to the stickiness of the application and give further motivation to get things done. All in all, it looked like a really good fit.

After procrastinating this change for 2015 and some of 2014, I finally took the plunge. I realized that the necessity for Todoist’s premium features (e.g. search, labels, notes, reminders, etc.) was high and worth the price of admission and paid the $29 and started moving my task lists.

To migrate tasks from Remember the Milk, I would copy the task page for a project to a text file and tweak it until Todoist would accept it through the template import process. If a project only had a handful of tasks, I would migrate those one at a time. This worked for the most part, but it was in this migration process that I realized I’d made a huge mistake.

For all the lack of innovation in the past seven years, there are quite a few features that Remember the Milk got completely right, still work amazingly well today and that were lacking in Todoist. The rest of this post will step through some of those features and show where I had problems with Todoist.

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]]>If you asked folks what circumstances would bring about an end to one of the most popular television shows . . . . in the wuuuurrrrrrrllld, I’m pretty sure that a lack of hot food wouldn’t come up. Yet, a closed kitchen and lack of a hot meal has brought and end to Top Gear as we know it.

So to pay tribute before Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May hopefully reunite on Netflix to pursue the same tomfoolery, here are some of their greatest hits:

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The Scenario

You are building a WordPress site. You are working down your to-do list of annoyances, feature needs, etc.

As is usually the case, you have found the handful of plugins that do almost exactly what you are looking for. But some tweaking will be required to get rid of the almost and give you exactly what you want.

You set about styling the plugin output through style sheets and through trial and error, you have it. . .

Arghhh!

Well, except for one minor thing that is going to bug the crap out of you and can’t be styled. You are either going to:

Delete the offending plug in and curse the developer who didn’t have the foresight to design to your exact specifications.

Jump into the plugin file and search for a way to fix it.

Live with this annoyance.

Realizing that #3 is no option at all and apologizing to the developer for his benevolence in giving you free code as you open door #2, you realize you can make a minor change to his code and get EXACTLY what you want and be done!

New Version Available

Yep you are done . . . until the plugin has an update.

WordPress is nothingif notpersistent in letting you know you aren’t current. You make a promise to yourself to not update the modified plugin. But after a few months, you are tired of being nagged “Update Available” in the dashboard and you break your promise. You accept all updates and bring the imperfection back.

Now, you have to either look back through your development notes (you did take notes as you made all these changes right?) and remake the change. Or revisit option #3.

There’s Got To Be A Better Way!

The quicker solution here is to disable updates on the modified plugin.

But of course, you won’t find an option in the WordPress Dashboard to selectively disable updates on Plugins.

The Solution

To make up for this Dashboard shortcoming, open up the modified plugin file. At the top of the php file, find the plugin metadata and change the version number.

I typically change the to version 100.100.100 so it is easy to distinguish as a hacked plugin, but you can put in any value you want so long as it is larger than the current version of the plugin.

I recently upgraded my cell phone. I’ve been using an HTC EVO Shift 4G for a couple years. While I will miss the physical keyboard, how HTC ever decided the paltry amount of phone storage (384 MB) was sufficient still baffles me.

The EVO was a company provided phone and since Sprint didn’t have any phones that were particularly compelling, I set out to upgrade my personal cell (An LG CU500 flip phone).

Based on some great reviews, I picked the HTC One X+ as my new phone of choice. But I encountered a few issues with AT&T.

I ordered the phone from Amazon Wireless on 12/24 with the 3GB data plan. The device finally arrived on 12/28.

I had to call AT&T to get voice service working. There was some issue with the sim card that I was told was already activated, but not working properly.

On 12/29, I left the house and was expecting to have data access on my new device. But that was not the case, so I set about figuring out what was wrong.

When I went to Settings -> Mobile Network, I saw “Connection Failed Due to Incorrect APN Setting”.

Recently, when trying to explain a home network layout to a VP for the seventh time, I had a need for a visual representation of what I was failing to verbalize.

It is with that in mind that I fired up Microsoft Visio to document how I was going to attempt to:

Provide better wireless coverage in his 4 story mansion with THICK plaster and lathe walls

Extend the same wireless signal out to his new pool house and garage.

I say attempt because in a house this old and large, the signal is going to be weak, no matter what. Of course, that I fixed this issue 9 months ago by putting the best router in place that I could find, only to have him replace it with a crappy AT&T 2Wire gateway without telling me counts for nothing.

Back to my Visio issue. Several times while creating his layout, I would draw the first few objects and then attempt to move one and Visio would stop responding. So I’d try it again, same freeze, but with a different action. WTH?

After a few more rounds of insanity, I got a note saying the “Send to Bluetooth” Add-In may not be working correctly, would I like to disable it? Sure enough, that did the trick and Visio has been behaving itself ever since.

To disable this add-in:

Go to File -> Options -> Add-Ins

Under Manage:, make sure COM Add-ins is selected and click Go

Uncheck the box for “Send to Bluetooth” and click OK

Hope this helps.

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Currently, Justin Bieber is continuing to sweep the world with his teen pop antics and musical stylings. He is the first true “social media” star. Sadly, Justin built his fame on a lie. Shocking, I know.

In a recent interview with Ryan Seacrest that aired on NBC’s Rock Center, Justin Bieber inadvertently revealed his true inspiration for his success in the music industry.

No, it’s not his soulful singing. Silky dance moves were certainly not involved. Nor did superfluous winking put him head and shoulders above the rest.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, can you tell me who is who? Bieber is even wearing a glittery jacket these days.

Thankfully, gone is the hair he ripped off from The Beatles. Replaced with another style rip-off.

Ironically, in Rockumentary, the following dialog took place:

Kelly Kapowski: That was the best song you ever wrote Zack.A.C. Slater: Yeah, I like the title, “Friends Forever.” It’s pretty cool.Samuel Powers: But we haven’t known each other forever. If we sing that, we’ll be living a lie.

Mr. Bieber, it is you who is living a lie!

It is time to cleanse yourself of this theft. Rinse, lather and keep repeating until you have restored the honor of the Zack Attack. Or at least, go shave your head.

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At home and work, I spend a lot of time in Microsoft Excel. Most of the important details of my life are stored somewhere in an Excel Workbook.

For some time, I wanted a way to save a log of the changes that were made to some of the workbooks.

But I didn’t make that change!

The primary reason for needing an excel audit log is Shared Workbooks. Inevitably, when groups collaborate in a single workbook, someone makes a change and then when it turns out to be wrong nobody remembers making the change.

I also think it is insightful to see how you use an application. Is there something you do often that could be scripted into efficiency? This logging gives you the peak behind the curtains.

What gets logged?

The code below will store the Date, Time, Username, Machine Name, Sheet Name and Message about each change. Feel free to track other info as needed, or change around the order of columns to suit your needs.

But only I need to see what happened!

Although I didn’t have a need to hide the Log sheet from my users, you might.

In a past iteration of this tracking code, I tried to use Cell.Value assignments. It was horribly slow. Like 2 seconds per change slow. That may not sound like much, but when you try to enter a range of data and after each cell change you have to wait 2 seconds, you’ll want to pull your hair out. Hence the array assignments which reduced the run time from 2 seconds down to about .06 seconds.

I put this code in Excel and nothing is happening.

Well, I wasn’t done yet, but I commend you on your vigor to try this code out!

You can now call this function leveraging various Events (Open, Close, Save, Print, etc) that are baked into Excel. You do this in the ThisWorkbook code section.

First create some variables to store previous and current values. Place this at the top of ThisWorkbook:

Tracking Cell Changes

As you’ll see in the sample code at the end of this article, there is some extra code in the Workbook_SheetChange section.

Private Sub Workbook_SheetChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)
CurrentValue = "" ' Reset the current value
If Sh.Name = "Log" Then Exit Sub
On Error Resume Next
If Err.Number = 13 Then
PreviousValue = 0
Else
CurrentValue = Target.Value
End If
On Error GoTo 0
' If there is no values, don't run the following. This fixed a custom macro to add 10 formatted blank lines in a detail sheet
If PreviousValue = "" And CurrentValue = "" Then Exit Sub
If VarType(PreviousValue) = VarType(CurrentValue) Then
If CurrentValue <> PreviousValue Then
If Err.Number = 13 Then
PreviousValue = 0
End If
If PreviousValue = "" Then
PreviousValue = "EMPTY"
End If
If CurrentValue = "" Then
CurrentValue = "EMPTY"
End If
LogChange (Target.Address & " changed from " & PreviousValue & " to " & CurrentValue)
End If
End If
PreviousValue = 0
End Sub

If you just plop the LogChange() function call in this section, you’ll get errors when the variant types on the CurrentValue and PreviousValue aren’t the same. You also won’t get any values for what was changed.

That’s what all the extra code is about; error checking and value tracking.

Note the code in Workbook_SheetSelectionChange as well as it is required to get cell changes to log properly.

Okay, I called the function where I wanted it, but I’m getting an error

Well, I didn’t script the creation of your Log sheet, so go create a sheet, rename it Log and put the headers in at the top of the sheet.

I’d recommend you also put an auto filter on the headers so you can quickly drill down in the future.

What’s the Catch?

Of course, this isn’t perfect code, here’s are the issues:

It doesn’t track copy/paste actions. I do a lot of copying/pasting in these workbooks and I have not found a way to trigger the LogChange() when a paste occurs.

Same problem for range deletions. If you select an all cells in a sheet and clear the contents, there is no log entry created.If you know how to capture either of these events or other missing events (like formatting changes) , let me know in the comments.

It doesn’t track Sheet Deletions.

Because I call the function from the Worksheet BeforeClose and Worksheet BeforeSave events, closing the workbook prompts for a save, even if you just saved it. I don’t remove the save call because it is enlightening to see users who NEVER save the workbook, except when they close it.

I’m not a programmer. There are probably many other improvements to be made to the code. I should probably re-comment as some of the comments aren’t really all that enlightening.

Even with these issues, I still find it very helpful to see a log of what updates have been made in an Excel workbook.

Sample Workbook

Rather than force you to try to copy and paste from the above text, you’re better off downloading the sample workbook and copying the code from there.

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I recently upgraded the hard drives in my home desktop and encountered a minor stumbling block that I thought I’d share with you all.

BACKGROUND

My desktop PC is setup with 3 hard drives. The boot drive is a 1TB drive (C:). I then have two 1.5TB drives (E: and F:) which serve as the foundation for my long term storage and file shares. F: is simply a clone of E: via SyncToy. Parts of C: and all of E: then gets backed up offsite with Crashplan.

Recently, the system has sporadically slowed to a crawl where it was unusable. While I rely on my laptop for actually getting anything done, this disruption reiterated to me the pivotal role my desktop PC still plays in my home computing infrastructure.

After some fruitless troubleshooting, I found a smattering of bad blocks on both E: and F: via chkdsk. I was also running with only 10-25% free space on those massive drives. Fixing those blocks pepped the system right up, but I never like to keep crucial data on drives with bad blocks any longer than necessary.

About 4 years ago, I splurged when I bought those 1.5TB disks figuring I wouldn’t ever fill them up. But I haven’t ever regretted having so much storage space. I took this opportunity to again expand my file storage capability by purchasing two Seagate 3TB disks.

Once the drives arrived, I wasted no time in installing them and heading into Disk Management to get my new drives formatted and ready to go.

THE PROBLEM

I’m met with a drive that shows 2 partitions that can’t be combined into a single partition. What in the world?

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW.

Master Boot Record (MBR) is the partition table format that has been used for what seems like forever. Built into the design of MBR is a hard limit of 2^32 logical blocks of 512 bytes or 2,199,023,255,552 bytes (2.19TB).

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

So while this is all fine and good and I know why I’m getting two partitions, what needs to be done to fix it?

The great news is that Windows 7 64-bit supports GPT partitions just fine. But how do you change your drive from MBR to GPT?

I didn’t find the answer readily available when Googling. I’m sure it’s out there, but I didn’t come across it. I did however get lucky when I right clicked the on the Disk line while in Disk Management.

THE CATCH

There’s always a catch, which is that you can’t boot from a GPT drive without a computer that has a UEFI compatible BIOS. From what I’ve read, not many systems are shipping with a UEFI compatible BIOS at this time. This was not an issue for me, but keep that in mind if you are planning on installing Windows to your huge drive.

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]]>I started using Prosper.com in late 2008. The hope was to find an investing platform that would pay a better return than the paltry 2.5% I get at my local credit union.

Unfortunately, peer-to-peer lending has failed me via Prosper.com. The notes I currently hold through Prosper once closed, will not be re-opened for a few reasons.

1. The Return Sucks . . . really bad

Prosper’s website is boasting a seasoned return of 10.46%. Ha!

Of the funds I lent, about 30% were not paid back.

This in and of itself is enough to flee from Prosper.

2. Statements are sporadic.

Monthly statements should be just that, monthly. Not with Prosper. My January 2012 statement just arrived today. It should have come the second week of February.

Statements do not arrive with any sense of regularity.

3. There are accounting discrepancies and no explanation for them.

Around December 2010, $11.50 went missing from my note value. It was not written off or otherwise accounted for.

I contacted support@prosper.com and asked for an explanation. $11.50 is not going to break the bank when I’m already losing 30%, but I want to know where it went.

They responded that they were aware of the issue and would be working to address it in January 2011.

The last message I received from support@prosper.com was:

Dear Mark,

Thank you for the follow up email. We do also see the discrepancy, once a plan is made for these statements we will email you with further details.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

For future reference, your Prosper support case number is XXXXXXXX.

Sincerely,
Prosper Customer Support

Fast forward to today. . .

I still don’t have an explanation and Support will no longer respond to my messages reminding them that the problem is not fixed.

Of the three reasons above, number one is enough to avoid Prosper. However, the last two issues indicate a larger red-flag of failed customer service and a lack of an accounting foundation that can accurately track customer funds.

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Microsoft has never met a gigabyte of storage space it didn’t like for underlying operating system needs. As hard drive capacities have increased, this has gotten worse. While I normally wouldn’t care, the introduction of solid state drives have changed the game. Now costs for storage space have gone back up and limits have contracted.
Once you move to an SSD, you won’t go back. I have the luxury of having a 256 GB SSD in both my home and work laptops. If you threatened to take either from me, I may shoot you.

This evening I was doing some drive clean up using my favorite disk space analyzer WinDirStat. It showed that besides my ridiculously huge Users directory (I have a couple of virtual machines in there), the Windows directory itself was consuming 31.9 GB of space. Good gravy that’s crazy!

The worst offender was the Winsxs directory. To read more about what Winsxs actually does, go here.

I did a bit of googling to try to figure out if and how that folder could be pared down. Most posts mentioned that it is critical to the OS, don’t try to delete it or your sky will fall and your Windows will crash with it. Other sites mentioned a tool that came out with Vista, that Microsoft neglected to include with Windows 7 SP1.

What this command does is remove superseded updates that are no longer needed after the installation of Service Pack 1. These updates are still kept around in case you want to uninstall SP1. As I have no plans on doing so, these files serve no purpose other than aggravating my quest to have more free hard drive space.

And that command gave me back 5 GB of space. A 6.5 GB winsxs is still crazy, but just not as stupid crazy as 11.5 GB. I’ll take a 43% reduction whenever I can get it.

Microsoft is pitching their web apps as a great and free solution to having your data everywhere. I’ve tried their web apps multiple times and can’t get over the slowness and lack of full features. (To be fair, I base that off of my experience with the Excel web app.) I don’t plan on giving up my full version of OneNote anytime soon.

While these mobile apps will only sync with the web app version of OneNote at live.com, I’ve found that the best use of these mobile apps is to use them as another “Unfiled Notes” section. Capture whatever note you want now on any device and periodically move them over to a regular OneNote notebook synced through Dropbox.

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After driving my newly acquired Civic for a few months, the time came to replace the wiper blades. I typically do this twice a year on my vehicles. It usually entails picking up a set of Anco replacement blades and swapping them out.

I recalled seeing, while researching my Civic purchase, that most stock replacement wipers didn’t fit the 8th Generation Civics. The stock wiper assembly are also better looking than the el-cheapo Anco units. So I bought some blades online and went about what I thought would be a 5 minute job.

After 30 minutes of trying to yank the blades off the assembly, looking online for a how-to and eventually digging out the manual, I was finally able to replace the blades.

Here are the manual pages on how to change a wiper blade. This is mostly as a reference for myself, but figured it may help anyone else attempting the herculean task of replacing the wiper blades on a Honda Civic.

These instructions are for a 2009 Honda Civic Si Sedan. While the basic installation steps should be the same for multiple years/models, specifics may vary. I think Sedans and Coupes use different blades. Also saw that the type of blade and wiper arm assembly was changed frequently since 2006.

You may also consider buying your wiper blades from your local Honda dealer, who may install them free of charge.

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I’ve been using Calgoo Connect to sync my Work Exchange Calendar with Google Calendar for some time. Though a resource hog, Calgoo Connect has worked until lately. Now the website seems to be down and syncing has stopped.

In setting out to find a different way to get work appointments to Google calendar, I came across Google Calendar Sync. The problem with Google Calendar Sync is that it will only sync from Outlook to your primary calendar. I had two problems with this:

I did not want all my work appointments to clutter up my personal calendar.

I wanted to maintain the color coding that comes with separate calendars.

I didn’t turn up any other freeware to accomplish what I was wanting to do. Instead, I figured out an obvious solution; create a dedicated gmail account to receive my work appointments and share the calendar with myself.

Recently, they have been making some interface changes. Some good. Some bad.

First the good news.

The look is different. Since most of the apps had never received a UI refresh, it was time.

Now the bad news.

I’m not sure the designer of the interface actually uses any of the products.

This person/team needs to reminded of a few of things:

1. My computer is not a smartphone.

Ninety-five percent of my browsing is done on a laptop with a very large monitors. I don’t mind tablets and smartphones; they have their place. But I want a full featured browsing experience when I’m not using a mobile device. The Ipad’s interface is ingenious and simple, but that doesn’t mean it should be everywhere.

Google Chrome’s new tab page now sucks as a result of some Googler thinking they need to make it behave like a smartphone or a tablet. The old New Tab page was extremely useful because it gave a heads up view of my apps, recent closed tabs and most visited pages. It was VERY handy. The new tab page, not so much.

(Photo apology: Sorry for the scrunched images. Click on them to see them full size.)

Now I have to scroll between two tabs to see apps and most visited pages. Awful and a lot less useful.

The fix: I’ve seen suggestions to install an old version and turn off updating. So not really a fix.

My wish:

Allow apps on the Most Recent tab.

Allow more than 8 recent sites

Put the Recently Closed back where it belongs

The left navigation of Gmail also suffers from this. I’d prefer to see my chat and widgets in one long window. Why do I now have to click a button to see who’s online, or my calendar widget?

2.White space is not the new black.

I don’t need extra whitespace between detail items just for the sake of having white space. Yes it makes the UI look cleaner. But it wastes a bunch of screen real estate and impacts the usability of the product.

The Chrome screenshot above is good example of purposeless white space. Here’s the image above, but at near full screen.

Google Reader is the biggest victim of this. After the update, I found myself clicking “Mark All As Read” a lot more frequently than normal as I couldn’t focus on the spaced out items. Maybe I’m weird, but I have seen a coupleposts on large nerd sites in the past few days soliciting suggestions for the best RSS Reader after the UI updates, so I don’t think I’m alone in this.

I did find a userscript that will help with this Google Reader spacing issue. You can find it here.

New Google Reader without userscript (7.5 items)

New Google Reader with userscript (11 items)

3. Provide a fallback plan

The most maddening thing of all these changes is that Google (who when I looked the other day, still provide a way to show the “Gmail – beta” logo) has been really good in the past of allowing legacy features to persist or giving users the option through application labs to enable/disable suspect changes.

The new UI changes seem to have no options or rollbacks.

Facebook is well known for making interface and feature changes that users hate. They seem to think they know best and that we’ll all be better off for their benevolent tweaking.

Until recently, Google has by and large been the anti-Facebook in making changes that collectively enrage their user base. That seems to be changing and is not a good thing.

The Rams were poised to make a comeback this season. The injury bug has already hit and it seems the 4th stringers will be taking the bulk of the snaps before long. And I doubt they will guide the Rams back to a winning record, even in a dreadful NFC West division.

Better find a way to whip the masses into a frenzy so no one notices the awfulness of the dome.

The Solution?

So to improve a horrid game experience, the marketing mavens with the Rams have come up with this gem. I believe it played during the loss to the Eagles on Sunday.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-d-Hf5Zzn4&w=500&h=305]

I hope that it is a joke, but I fear that is not the case. It originally came from the Rams’ website. Let’s slow clap it out.

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I recently started having an issue when viewing Google Maps with Chrome. When viewing any Google Map, I would click to drag the map and the click would hang. I’d let go of my mouse, but the map would still move with my mouse.

As a workaround, I’d right click the map to stop the panning action. This worked, but not very well.

Of course the best line of the segment was used in the introduction and is not in these videos. Jeremy Clarkson states, “Whenever you turn on the news, what is it that’s bogging down the enormous American military machine? Yeah, doesn’t matter whether it’s Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever. You’ve always got a bunch of guys who rock up in their home clothes with a half-timbered machine gun and look all of them in a flatbed Toyota.”

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]]>While the Large Morning Show in the Afternoon is not as good on Friday afternoons when Frank is out, it is still listenable. I’ve been wondering if the rumors I had read were true. I had read that he was visiting his father in San Diego.

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Ever since my first viewing of Back to the Future, I have wanted a Toyota pickup. The movie comes to a close with Marty McFly openinig up the garage to find a gleaming black Toyota truck.

From then on as a child, when I would draw, I would doodle pickup trucks that all resembled a mid-80’s Toyota Truck. A truck that has disappeared from the truck landscape.

Side Note: There are a lot of continuity issues across all 3 Back to the Future episodes. See a few minor differences between the truck and garage in I, II and III here.

Since 2001, I owned this 1998 Toyota Tacoma 4×4 extended cab. I LOVED this truck. It was the perfect size. Itwasbuiltlike a tankandwouldgoanywhere. It got decent gas mileage for a truck (just under 20 mpg). It had over 208,000 miles when I recently sold it. Yet I can’t replace it with a new truck of comparable size. Tacoma pickups are now classified as a mid-size pickup.

I had planned to keep this truck for at least 350,000 miles. I sold it when I found a small hole in the frame shown above. (Here’s an example of significantly worse Tacoma Frame Rot). Toyota made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. They offered to repurchase my truck for $2,500 less than I paid for it 10 years ago.

Where has the compact truck gone?

Every pickup in America has been on steroids for the past decade and what used to be a compact is now mid-size. What used to be mid-size is now full-size. What used to be full-size is now almost qualified to pull a fifty-three foot trailer. The trucks these days keep getting bigger and bigger. As each truck graduates to the next larger class, the compact truck has been left behind.

To my knowledge, the smallest truck available in the US is the Ford Ranger, which is a good truck, but even it has grown in size the past few years. And Ford recently announced they will be stopping production on the final small truck.

Hello? McFly!

In this day and age of environmental concern and expensive gas, why have all of the major manufacturers chosen to eliminate the most fuel efficient truck models from their lineups? All manufacturers should be building more compact trucks and touting their size and fuel efficiency until marketing budgets are exhausted.

Our benevolent government is behind the death of the compact pickup. Blame them for this vehicular homocide using the weapon of unintended consequence.

From the (very) little I understand about CAFE standards, it appears that the framework of this edict is that the smaller the footprint of the vehicle, the higher the bar for fuel economy. See this site (dead link) for more gibberish about CAFE mandates.

Rather than engineer their vehicles to meet these progressively more impossible targets, the manufacturer’s killed the small truck. From a business perspective, this makes sense. Compact trucks are a relatively small market and if it required an unknown capital investment to continue to sell them, the shortest distance between two points is to shut down production on small trucks or expand their size until a larger classification with lower fuel goals is reached. Looks like the manufacturers chose the latter.

Government is the problem.

As with anything our government touches, the road to unintended consequences is paved with good intentions. Good fuel economy is a laudable goal. When the end result of a mandate is to accomplish the exact opposite of what its authors intended, then the system is broken. I know this is not news. Reagan had it right, “Government is not the answer to the problem. Government is the problem”.

I don’t work in a job where I HAVE to have a small pickup. I don’t really NEED a truck. There are a lot of companies who REQUIRE a small pickup. Their higher fuel bills and expenses related to these bigger trucks will no doubt be passed on in the form of higher prices.

Even though I don’t have to have a compact truck, I loved my truck. I recently purchased a Honda Civic. I would have rather purchased a new truck, but there wasn’t one available in the size that I wanted. I do imagine getting a sheet of plywood for projects around the house is going to be much more tricky in the future.

Wal-Mart corporate lore says that the idea for the greeter was born in Louisana, when none other than Sam Walton himself walked into a store with a shoplifing problem and was welcomed by an “associate” put there by the store manager. His charge? To welcome customers and make sure merchandise was paid for. Eventually, this idea was deemed to be so great that it has been instituted in every other store across the country.

The Wal-Mart greeter was born.

Thirty plus years later and this grand plan has not been re-evaluated. I’d like to suggest it is high time to take a look at whether these greeters are necessary, effective or capable of accomplishing their relatively basic jobs.

Greeters don’t actually greet.

Rarely do I walk into a Wal-Mart where a greeter actually says “Hello” or “Hi” or even acknowledge that I am indeed entering their store. I’ll often greet them and often times get a startled response.

Though as a greeter, based on some of the clientele entering a Wal-Mart, I wouldn’t speak to them either. For a lot more examples go to: www.peopleofwalmart.com

Want to return something? Not without a sticker.

Usually, the employees posted up front are wrangling carts, talking with other associates, lazy or trying to figure out how to print out a label so a customer can return something.

Greeters are integral to the return system, which also sucks.

Wal-Mart, I realize that people steal a lot of stuff from your stores. I realize that measures need to be in place to protect against shoplifing. It used to be that you would use an old price gun and put a pink sticker on the return to prove that it had been brought in and not taken off the shelf. Low tech and relatively fast.

The system now? These older and slower individuals are using handheld computers with tiny buttons. They scan every item. They print out labels out for every item.

Here’s a recent example of this wonderfully efficient system: I was returning 3 items that were less than $10. First, Mr. Greeter was unable to find the barcode. Once he did, he scanned the entire length of all three items to make sure he hit the UPC code. After fumbling around with the handheld computer, the labels printed, but he didn’t have the dexterity to tear them off; he had to cut them off with scissors. The total amount of time this took? Over 5 minutes.

What is the point of this insanity? Low-tech and funtional has been replaced with high-tech, pointless and downright stupid. Will the return desk take anything back without a greeter-printed sticker? No, the system collapse, and I’m left wondering why I didn’t just go to Target in the first place.

I would also wager that the amount of shrinkage from incompetence and employee theft far outweighs that which is prevented by this greeter-based checkpoint in the return process.

Greeters don’t check receipts on exit either

Besides welcoming shoppers, the greeter is also supposed to make sure merchandise is not leaving the store when it hasn’t been paid for. As every Wal-Mart I’ve been too recently has an electronic inventory control system, it would seem this job has been effectively outsourced. Though, even when the bells and whistles sound, no associate stops the shopper to check what piece of merchandise is leaving the store.

So why don’t greeters greet?

30 years ago, there were 2-4 doors to cover the store as people entered, it was easier for shoppers to be greeted. Now, there’s a good 50 feet of entryway to cover. These folks aren’t up to the task.

More likely someone in middle management in Bentonville, Arkansas decided that they could utilize an existing paradigm to synergize the merchandise re-entry system and customer acknowledgement initiative and by doing so would save zillions of dollars. In the process they distracted the greeter from doing the one thing that it is clear they should be doing when someone enters the store; say, “Hello”.

Next cost savings initiative? Get rid of the blue smocks and replace them with the cheaper bag uniform scene here:

To sum up, most greeters should not be employed. They should be retired. They should be playing shuffleboard and catching the early bird special at 4pm. I understand that such picturesque retirement is not an option for all. But if they must work as greeters, then for the love of all that is holy, please fulfill the title.

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]]>I recently purchased a 2009 Honda Civic. It is my first venture into a non-Toyota vechicle. As with any purchase, as soon as I get my hands on it, I go about fixing all of the small annoyances I have with it.

This car is a blast to drive and doesn’t have too many annoyances that I needed to address. I figured I’d share a couple of them as others out there might also encounter the same issues.

Daytime Running Lights

I’ve never been a fan of daytime running lights. To me they just make the driver of a car with them look as if he or she forgot to turn off his or her lights. As more people drive cars with DRL, the less effective they are as a supposed safety mechanism.

This is the first car I’ve had where turning off the DRL was not an option on the headlight on/off switch.

Seatbelt Chime

The United States has turned into a very safety conscious nation. It seems that every police and governmental agency wants to ensure that every person in a vehicle is firmly strapped to any wreckage. Except, of course, if you are a young skull full of mush riding on a school bus. In this case, be prepared to turn into a missile should your crotchety driver hit anyone whilst turning around to yell at you.

While I believe it prudent to wear your seat belt, I find these seat belt laws and “Click It or Ticket” campaigns to be revenue-generating wastes of time. A government cannot ticket a society to safety, but they sure can bring in a lot of revenue in doing so.

The auto makers engineer seat belt nag systems that are horribly annoying and persistent. Can you turn them off? Of course not.

That said, if someone has a reason to not wear their seat belt, that is their call in my opinion.

After searching high and low for a solution to disable the Civic seat belt nag, I found these: Ebay – Seat Belt Nag Disablers. They work well and for $4 shipped, they were well worth it.

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]]>I have been using Craigslist Ad Tracker [CAT] for some time to keep an eye on items listed on Craigslist.

Recently, I ran into a new limit of 10 items that CAT has put in place. Frustrated, I started searching for a replacement and didn’t find much.

I recalled reading about an open source Google Analytics tool called Piwik. I hadn’t tried it out yet as for most sites Google Analytics is hard to beat. I gave Piwik a try and found that it works pretty well for giving insight into ads on Craigslist.
To install Piwik, you’ll need your own web server capable of running MySQL and PHP 5.1. You can follow the Piwik install instructions here: http://piwik.org/docs/installation/

Once you get Piwik installed successfully, login to your site and then Settings -> Websites and choose Add New Website.

Enter a name for your item or site. Fill out any of the other items, if you’d like and click Save.

Then click View Tracking Code.

Because Craigslist does not allow Javascript, you need to use the Image Tracker Code. This is also why Google Analytics can’t be used. (If Google provided an image tracker, I’d have probably used that. I couldn’t find one.) Ebay and a host of other sites don’t allow Javascript either and you could probably use this method on those sites as well.

After clicking Display Image Tracker code, you’ll see the code you need to copy/paste into your ad. The only part of that you have to copy is:

Repeat this for each item you are selling. After you get sites created, wait a few hours/days and you’ll begin seeing data showing up in Piwik under the All Websites view. You can also select each item from the Dashboard tab to get more detailed info.

I’m not sure why Craigslist is against providing insight into viewers of ads. I would not be at all surprised if they come up with a way to block this method too. In the meantime, however, hopefully this will give you more information about potential buyers of items you have for sale online.

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]]>As per usual, I update this site in spurts and without much regularity. With the same amount of randomness as my updates, here are some things that have intrigued me lately.

The Parking Lot at my office

The company I work for has been in the same building for 10+ years. In that time, zero maintenance has been done to the parking lot. Stripes were finally painted about 4 years ago. While stripes are helpful, the potholes are getting ridiculous.

Based on a brand on the back of the carving, I found it was done by Wood Den. You can find more of his work here: http://www.wood-den.com/

OBL

The world is a better place now that Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Sidenote: I keep thinking of the Vince Flynn character, Mitch Rapp when I picture the operation. I’d highly recommend his novels.

I doubt it will happen, but I would love to see an interview on 60 Minutes with the team that performed the raid.

I’d love to shake the hand of the man that saw OBL through his sights and pulled the trigger. I’d love to hear what was going through that man’s head just before the moment he sent a round through Osama’s.

“Facebook”

Is it me or is Facebook turning into Bartlett’s Quotations 2.0? Seems like a lot of folks have some sort of introspective or witty quote as their status these days.

I for one don’t update my status as I believe most people don’t give a crap what I happen to be doing at any given time (I’ve got this website for that sort of thing). But let’s not get all “preachy” people. Just tell the world your day sucked, you can’t wait for the weekend, *sigh* or your eating cheetos and be done with it.

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OneNote is the holder of random bits of information that would otherwise be strewn about my bookmarks, saved files or thrown away and forgotten. It is SO handy. In a lot of ways, it has become the dumping grounds of my life. If I were a college student, OneNote would be my favorite application.

Dropbox keeps me sane by allowing me to have one set of data spread across multiple computers. It backs up, it versions and is just awesome.

Put OneNote and Dropbox together and you have a match made in heaven.

Well, almost.
Until today, I had one major problem using OneNote with Dropbox.

If I were on a home computer and sent something to OneNote, it would go in just fine. But then if I went to one of my other systems to pull up that content, it wouldn’t always be there. Sure enough, I’d check the file path and find that Dropbox had gotten confused and created a conflicted copy.

If I didn’t realize that something was missing right away and started capturing to my Unfiled Notes from a different system, I’d lose data.

The source of my problem was that I had set all of my systems up to copy to the same Unfiled Notes notebook. This made sense during the setup as of course I want all my Unfiled Notes to be together and accessible in one place. But the more I ran into this conflicted file business, the more frustrated I got.

Today, the solution finally dawned on me:

Create a dedicated OneNote notebook for Unfiled Notes.

Create a section in the notebook for each computer.

Point each system to the appropriate section from Step 2 Under OneNote -> Options -> Save & Backup -> Unfiled Notes Section.

So if you made the same mistake I did in putting all your Unfiled Notes into the same file from different computers, hopefully this fix will help you.

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]]>https://www.marktastic.com/2011/04/onenote-dropbox-missing-unfiled-notes/feed/0https://www.marktastic.com/2011/04/onenote-dropbox-missing-unfiled-notes/A phrase I never thought I’d hear on TVhttp://feeds.marktastic.com/~r/Marktastic/~3/NHds7TXwWC8/
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]]>I’ve started watching Pawn Stars recently. A good show that illustrates the crap you have is worth only as much as someone will pay for it.

While this show features a lot of odd stuff, a gentleman wanting to sell his drag racer and trailer featured a phrase that I never thought I would hear on TV.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtkOSNJ3tTg&w=500&h=305]

Sir, you may think your trailer and drag racer are worth $30,000, but I can assure you, the Mark Williams rear-end is worth way more than a measly $10K.

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Thank you for your help in selecting a color for my roof. I know that voter turn-out was light, but the results were close (9 to 8), but the favorite, Thunderstorm Grey pulled out a win.

Before

After

Now as to why it took a year to post the results? Well, while a new roof is installed, I was not at all impressed with the contractor who did the work and it has taken quite a while to get all the issues resolved.

If you are local to St. Louis and want to know who to avoid, contact me and I’ll let you know who did it.

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This was going to be a post about Albert Pujols and his stalled contract negotiations. I was going to give a compelling and well thought out argument that the Cardinals will be just fine without him.

But then the Cardinals suffered a massive loss with the season (plus) ending injury to the Horse of the Rotation, Adam Wainwright, so I scrapped that post and started over.

So a shorter mention on El Hombre

As good as Albert is, and he is phenomenal, he is a smaller piece to the Cardinals’ success than Mr. Wainwright.

If the Cardinals don’t meet his contract demands, that salary will be used towards the multiple pieces needed to plug that gap. But again, as good as he is, there are more value-oriented players to play first base.While he is consistently awesome, I’m not sure the Cardinals can afford to pay him for future production when that production is almost surely going to drop in 4-5 years, but his pay will be based on his 10 year track record of awesomeness. Sure they have the money, but what good is Albert when you can’t field a team around him?

If the rumors of 10 years/30 million are in the ballpark of what Albert is seeking, then let the Cubs (who seem more than eager to throw crazystupid money at Albert) or some other sucker sign him. They can be saddled with him in his 40’s at a price that will be WAY too much for a past-their-prime slugger who currently has so many aches and pains he doesn’t run out ground balls to first.

And even Albert can’t save the Chicago Cubs. They are forever doomed to the suckitude we are all accustomed to.

A Real Ball Breaker – 12. to. 18. months.

I was listening to a local morning show on Wednesday when it was announced that Adam Wainwright was returning to St. Louis for a medical evaluation. Just before the announcement came, Cardinals starter, Jake Westbrook was being interviewed and was discussing his recovery from Tommy John surgery. He was commenting that it was 2+ years before he was back to what he thought was his normal self.

The true impact of Adam Wainwright’s injury is not just limited to 2011. Adam probably won’t return to the lineup until June or July of 2012 at the earliest. Even then, he probably won’t be 100%. So Adam, notwithstanding his now tenuous contract situation, is basically out for 2 years. Suck.

20 game winners do not grow on trees. Pitchers who are still sharp after 115 picthes are rare. True staff aces that make what Wainwright made in his current contract are non-existent. Adam is the top of the rotation. While we still have a solid rotation with Carpenter, Garcia, Lohse and Westbrook, it does not look nearly as promising as it did a week ago.

A few notes on the Blues

It is still hockey season, and as with any team in the Western Conference (except the Oilers), the Blues are still in the playoff hunt. The Blues were also active last week in the trade market.

The Departed

I’m indifferent to Eric Brewer’s departure. He was always a solid defenseman who got a raw deal from the fans. It wasn’t his fault he was what we received for the Pronger salary dump during an ownership transition. Pronger was awesome. News outlets report that Brewer was a strong leader for the team, but unfortunately, his leadership did not advanced the playoff hopes of the Note.

Erik Johnson on the other hand has been disappointing as the first overall pick in the 2006 draft. Here are the names of some of the other players we could have had: Toews, Kessel, Staal. I never understood why we picked him to begin with and he hasn’t lived up to his #1 overall pick billing. He gave up the puck a lot in our zone and I’m glad he’s gone.

Jay McClement has been a stalwart of the Blues for some time. His consistent energy and penalty killing skills will be missed.

The Additions

Chris Stewart was the only player I recognized as he consistently scored A LOT against us. He seems to have gelled very well with the team and thus far has 6 goals in 5 games. He’s the big butt we’ve been lacking since Keith Tkachuk retired. I look forward to seeing his posterior parked in the goal crease for some time. The Blues definitely got the better end of this trade.

Generally, I love WordPress. It is a terrific publishing engine that has all but rendered my desire to create websites from scratch moot. I’d just like to address one thing I’d love tweaked.

But I have run into this issue enough though lately that I figured I’d share it. And really, #3 below is what motivated this post as I lost what was almost a complete item when I tried to add a picture.

For instance create a new post or page and try any of the following:

Change Publishing Options. You can’t change the status, visibility or time of your post. Clicking the Edit button does nothing.

Adding Tags & Categories. It doesn’t allow it

Adding a picture. If you try to click on the add picture (or any other media for that matter), your browser will load the upload tool, but it will do so in the same window you were working on. If you have drafted any content before clicking the add media button, kiss it goodbye.

How do you fix all this weirdness? Quite simple, save a draft. This should be addressed by my own frequent advice to Save Early and Save Often, but I have butted up against these issues too many times lately.

It would be terrific if after typing in a new post for 3 minutes or so that a draft is automatically saved. (I picked 3 minutes as that is what I am used to in Outlook.)

I can understand why this feature is not included as for a lot of folks it would result in quite a few orphaned drafts and clutter up the works in that respect. But man would it be handy.

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I’ve been using TrackMyShipments.com for some time to keep track of all the packages that arrive from Ebay, Amazon, etc. It was a handy tool to show you the status of shipments for USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL in one place.

After creating an account with TrackMyShipments.com, it went something like this:

Buy something

Get a shipment notification

Forward that notification to Track@TrackMyShipments.com

I found out the hard way today that TrackMyShipments.com has ceased operations. A notice on their site said they could not discover a business model that produced enough profit to allow them to expand they way they wanted to, or something like that. It’s a shame as I don’t recall any advertising or freemium options on their site.

I set out to find a replacement and via Lifehacker.com found TrackThePack.com*. (Note to Lifehacker: Your new site design is much harder to use than the old one. Not a good change.)

A few notes on TrackThePack.com:

The interface at TrackThePack.com is much better than I was used to at TrackMyShipments.com

The e-mail parser at TrackThePack.com is MUCH more aggressive than I am used to. It created 6 shipments out of one notification that I forwarded to it today.

I wish that the TrackThePack.com e-mail parser would take the Subject Line and assign it as the Note/Description of the shipment. That would be handy.

If you find yourself tracking a bunch of packages, give TrackThePack.com a shot.

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I recently found myself building an SCCM package for Adobe Reader 9.4. Sure enough, I got it tested, packaged and distributed just as Adobe Reader X was released. I mention that only as a disclaimer that I don’t know if the following works with Adobe Reader X.

After testing with a pilot group, some of them mentioned that the default toolbar in Adobe Reader 9.4 had a couple of things they didn’t want and a few items that the did want.

Here is the default Adobe Reader toolbar:

Here is what I wanted it to look like:

I set about trying to find where Adobe stored the settings for that toolbar and had the hardest time finding it. I finally stumbled across it here. Since the answer was not easy to find, I figured I’d use this as an excuse to update my oft-neglected site.

So customize your menu to your liking and then export that reg key and you’ll be good to go.

The other problem I ran into is that I had set the regedit /S “myregfile.reg” command in SCCM to be run under an administrative context. Because Adobe stores the toolbars in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, you have to make sure that your program is set to run Only When a user is logged on so that you can force it to Run with user’s rights.

3 Way

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]]>https://www.marktastic.com/2010/11/saturday-night-live-digital-shorts-justin-timberlake-andy-samberg/feed/0https://www.marktastic.com/2010/11/saturday-night-live-digital-shorts-justin-timberlake-andy-samberg/So I Am Supposed to Update This Site, Right?http://feeds.marktastic.com/~r/Marktastic/~3/BUSEGhgHnhM/
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]]>I sure do suck at making time to keep this site updated in any semblance of a reasonable frequency. Perhaps, I’ve been reading too many books lately. As such, I’ll throw out a few book recommendations to tide you over until I start writing more!
Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods. Jr

If you at all think that the federal government has reached its tentacles too far into much of American life and hope for a way to suppress the constant growth of government, this book provides very factual, very rational means of doing so from the perspective empowering the States in the way and means that the framers intended.

Perhaps the best look at why our economic house of cards almost came crashing down. Unfortunately, trillions in money we don’t have were squandered to perpetuate the myth that our economy is back on solid footing by politicians seeking to avoid being in office when it comes crashing down. This book was very well written and very easy to read.

I actually read this and “The Know It All” by AJ Jacobs. Both are entertaining books. If only I had thought of putting myself through the torture of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (now obsolete thanks to Wikipedia), or living as literally, the Bible, for one year. I’d have probably shot myself in the head before day 365.

I’ve always been a big passive index fund investor, but this book confirmed that which I already believed. It also introduced the idea of Value Averaging, which I will be researching more into the future. VA provides a boost in investment returns over my normal Dollar Cost Averaging, but requires a bit more calculation.

NOTE: The links above are through my Amazon Associates account, so if you pick up any of these titles, please use the links above.

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]]>I recently realized that most of the books I own will never be read again by me (if I ever read them in the first place). As such, I’m selling them all. Please see below for a list of books for sale.

I’m willing to ship books (via UPS), provided you paypal me the money, but this will be a better deal for those of you in the St. Louis Metropolitan area.

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I recently made the switch to Windows 7 and at the same time made the jump from 32-bit to 64-bit. So far so good, except for. . .

The Cisco VPN Client

From what I have read around the intertubes, Cisco will not be making a 64-bit VPN client. They instead are encouraging folks to use AnyConnect. Currently, my office firewall is not properly configured to use AnyConnect and with other more pressing tasks at the moment, is not likely to be configured any time soon.

So my interim solution was to use VMWare Workstation to run an XP virtual machine for the sole purpose of connecting to VPN. While workable, this was not ideal.

I searched the other night and came across this post, which points to a great answer.

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So the nerd level of this post is slightly higher than normal, but I have recently been working on a couple of Windows Server 2008 R2 systems. The machines are running on VMWare ESX 3.5.

Randomly, and usually while browsing the Start Menu or Windows Explorer, the system would hang. It was still responsive to ping, but I could not access the system through VNC, Remote Desktop or the VMWare console.

I started searching for answers and came across this thread, which points to the VMWare SVGA II driver as the problem on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The recommend doing a custom install of VMWare Tools to deslect that SVGA driver, but I found that disabling the driver in Device Manager was just as effective and faster.

So if you are having random lockups, freezes, hangs or stalls on Windows Server 2008 (or Windows 7) and you are running VMWare ESX, disable the SVGA II driver and you should be good to go.

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About a year ago, I recommended to you, the handful of readers of Marktastic, that Lunarpages was a great place to host a website. This site was initially hosted there.

I want to apologize for any of you that took my word and went with Lunarpages. They are awful. I found quickly after this site got up and going that it would be frequently turned off by Lunarpages “Support”. Apparently, a portion of my site was pegging a the processor on my shared server. I run WordPress with a lot of plugins, so I can see that this would be possible if I had a suspect plugin or script installed.

What was very frustrating is that there was no warning about the disabled site and no usable information was provided about which script was causing the problem, when the problem was occurring or for what duration. I would get a process listing from their server showing that index.php had gone rogue, but that was all.

I would go back and forth with their tech support and eventually they would re-enable my script, even though I wouldn’t change any part of my site. It got to be too much, too often.

I had already pre-paid for 2 years of service when I gave up and sought out a refund from Lunarpages. Well, they have a very shady policy that only offers a refund within 30 days of opening an account. If you decide to abandon them before the end of your term, you are out the money.

I searched for a new host and am currently with Dreamhost. Thus far, they have been great. My site has not been turned off and the features of the site are so much better.

Ultimately, I’ve abandoned Lunarpages and would highly discourage anyone from using their service. Because they suck.

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I love you. I really do. You’ve been my hockey team for a long time. I’ve put up with a lot of mediocrity. I’ve put up with those God awful jerseys that had way too much red in them. For a time, I bought into the notion that simply making the playoffs was a successful season; that maintaining a streak of 26 consecutive playoff appearances was a great accomplishment. After the lockout, I hoped that your streak would be broken, so that the focus of a season was not getting to the playoffs, but winning them. The new ownership groups seems committed to that end.

This season has been hard for me. I had really high hopes of you extending the progress you made last season. Given all the youngtalentwehave, we should be poised to make a deeper run toward Lord Stanley’s Cup. But you are letting me down.

Maybe you need to steal an idea from baseball and bring in a closer in the last 10 minutes of the third period. A Mariano Rivera quality shut-down-pillow-stacker that does nothing than make sure you don’t blow a late lead.

Maybe you need to not be so complacent with a third period lead and keep attacking. You sit back and let the other team shoot. Guess what? They are more likely to score when you let them shoot.

Or maybe it is as simple as allowing Cam Janssen to go out and beat someone’s face in late in the third period. Okay, maybe not, but at least it would be more fun.

Some History First

I first became acquainted with Excel on a Mac Classic in junior high school. It was an awkward time for us both. She appeared in grayscale and on a screen that was not adequate to display all that she could offer. I was buying my jeans from the husky section and didn’t quite appreciate my nerdiness.

My love affair with this blockish beauty took off as I was preparing to leave the ranks of higher education. I needed a way to keep track of the big bucks that were soon to land square in my wallet. It was a good match. We had our awkward moments, particularly in the summer of 1999 when we took a hard drive and crashed. Data amnesia syndrome hit us hard and we lost all the history we had established. In the years since, Excel has proven a capable mistress at taming my financial tracking into a mundane, but well managed, afterthought. She has also expanded her role to keeping tabs on almost all other areas of my life. Just last year, she even started telling me when my car needs an oil change.

The Decline

While Excel has proven quite adept at keeping up with the monetary minutia of my existence, I’ll be honest and say that, as tends to happen in long relationships, the focus on maintaining myself as a presentable partner slowly eroded.

I’m an average sized gentleman. I’m 5′ 8″ and my drivers license shows I tip the scales at 170 lbs. That weight has not been accurate since I got my license at age 16. In the years that have passed since then, my girth has grown slowly, but steadily every year, with the exception of maybe one.

Now even at the aforementioned height-weight proportions, I realize that medically, according to BMI, I would still classify as “Overweight”. I’ve always been on the portly side. More recently, though I hide it well, however, my weight class could only be described as “Fatty McLardbutt”.

The literal tipping point came for me when I tipped the scales at a way-too-fat-206-pounds. On that day, I finally allowed Excel to step in and do what she does best. I had considered asking her to help in the past to stem the tide, stop the bleeding and help me fit into pants that were now more than a bit snug and get back to use some belt notches that hadn’t seen action in years. I thought I could keep genetics and my healthy appetite under control, but time had proven to me that I was too much of a sucker for candy dishes at work, delicious pastries and general snackertainment when bored.

=VLOOKUP(“Help”,My_Weight,206)

I was wrong, I needed Excel, my belle, to set the table. But instead of setting the table with tasty morsels of nearly raw steak and potatoes, I needed a bacon-wrapped spread of raw data, formulas and graphs.

In August of 2009, I started tracking my weight and food/beverage intake. Almost instantaneously, the pounds started coming off. My sheet featured some conditional formatting (gains in red, losses in green) to color code my weight change, a line graph that shows my weight over time and summarizes the progress made thus far.

It was instant accountability! Accountability that I had never before existed for me. Ignorance of my eating was banished from my list of excuses. No longer could I wander my office and stop by one of the many candy dishes for a helping of 7 mini Kit Kats or 13 bite size Snickers. The times of eating 3 ice cream bars after dinner . . . GONE. Now if I followed the path of fat, I would have a Hansel & Gretel like trail showing me how I got there.

The Less Rotund Recap

I’m down to 175 lbs. My initial goal is to get back to 170. Once I get there, I may try to make it to a range that according to BMI is no longer in the “Overweight” category, or I might just let myself go.

The sheet probably not fully tweaked as it is a standalone version of the one I use everyday. Feel free to comment if something is broken in it.

If you find this helpful and you drop a few pounds, by all means, please Support This Site!

Here’s to your own weight loss.

A tweaking option for Microsoft Excel

I hate the default color scheme that ships with Excel 2007. So I’ve customized it to create a better looking theme. The sheet available above will probably look funny under the default excel color theme.

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A while back, I got a Bag of Crap from Woot. It included a limited edition (1634 of 2000) Woot Bucket.

I have not found a good use for this beautiful bucket in the year or so that I’ve had it, so I’m selling it and a few other Woot collectibles.

If you would like to be the owner of a very rare Woot bucket, head on over to ebay and place a bid or two. If you win, you also get, some Woot Lights and a couple never-used, flying Woot Monkeys with purple capes.

The one good thing about tonight was that everyone got to dance in their own style and they were good.

It seems though that SYTYCD has finally reached BIG SHOW status and with that they got themselves a fancy pants bigger set/stage/studio . . . and so far it sucks.

The stage itself is HUGE. Like 8 times the size of a person huge. It dwarfs the dancers and seems out of balance. It is just too imposing a presence when dancers are doing their thing.

I think the other reason I didn’t like tonight’s premiere is that the camera angles are all screwy. Thus far I’ve noticed that the cameras are:

1. Zoomed in too close and you can’t see the feet.

2. Shooting up at the dancers. The camera is below the stage and presents an awkward angle.

3. On a decent level but crooked or too close of a shot. And it would rock back and forth.

4. On a camera from way the crap out in the balcony or suspended from the ceiling of the airplane hangar where they shot this.

Really, it doesn’t have the same feeling as past seasons. The crappy camera angles coupled with a stage and backdrop that dwarfs and looms over the dancers just creates an awful separation that sucks to watch.

I’m hoping that when they start the competition tomorrow night they are back in the normal studio and all is well again.

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If you are like me, you have several USB Keys sitting around doing nothing. It’s time to repurpose those old drives. Turn them into a swiss-army drive that contains any possible program you might need . . . and for free!

I’ve been a big fan of the Portable Apps suite for some time. Granted, most of my software is installed locally, but it’s nice to have an alternative at hand on a spare flash drive for use in a pinch.
Having portable applications was great, but Portable Apps don’t update their application list to new version often enough for my liking and the update process was also more manual than I would have liked.

Enter Liberkey. I haven’t noticed any apps missing from any of their suites that I used before. In addition, they have a great updating utility. The apps also seem to be updated to the current full version more quickly too.

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When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

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Tired of a bank that pays you less than 1% APY on your hard-earned cash? Consider peer-to-peer lending. I’ve used both Prosper & Lending Club in recent times and am happy with both. You get WAY better returns (currently 10%+), with slightly more risk, but why let your money just sit there put it to work.

If you want a bonus for trying either system, please click the links below.

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]]>https://www.marktastic.com/2009/05/will-ferrell-as-goulet-on-conan-obrien/feed/0https://www.marktastic.com/2009/05/will-ferrell-as-goulet-on-conan-obrien/Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No Onehttp://feeds.marktastic.com/~r/Marktastic/~3/wvjLVa0hZc8/
https://www.marktastic.com/2009/04/why-the-meltdown-should-have-surprised-no-one/#respondWed, 29 Apr 2009 15:10:11 +0000http://www.marktastic.com/?p=451
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]]>Someone much smarter than I explains the indicators leading to the economic problems the US is currently facing.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgMclXX5msc&w=500&h=405]

So I came home curious and started searching about how this dance started and found a couple of forum threads on the at stlblues.com here and here (both links dead).

From what I can tell, one guy started doing this dance (the forums point to a guy named Brock Boner or Jago). If the guy who started this is Jago, then this YouTube Clip supposedly shows him. Brock Boner sounds fake to me, so I’ll go with Jago. A group near the Top Shelf area saw him and started mimicking him and it has caught on very quickly.

Pretty hilarious stuff. I hope to see all 19,250 present doing this in the playoffs. GO BLUES!

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In recent weeks, I’ve started using Dropbox. It’s a nifty little web app that allows you to store crap online. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Self, that’s not all that great, the Internet is full of people storing crap online; just look at YouTube.” and you’d be right. . .

Except that Dropbox provides a desktop utility that syncs your data to their servers and to any other client you have setup. So what does this mean to you? (They get bonus points for providing cross-platform clients.)

Well, it means you can use it to sync any file across multiple computers of different operating systems simply by saving it.

For instance, you could sync your Firefox profile across your home laptop, your work laptop, your home desktop, your second work computer and for good measure the mac you have at home, but never use. And that’s what I’m currently using it for. I like my Firefox just how I like my Firefox and by having one profile across the multiple computers, I don’t have to install the same extension upgrade 6 times, or repeat the same configuration steps multiple times. It’s very nice.

Millstadt is a quaint little town; most of my recollections of growing up there bring back memories of classmates who loved 4-wheelers and didn’t really approve of black people.

I also recall a Golden Dipt factory that was neighbor to one of the best fish stands around. I only knew it as “The Millstadt Fish Stand”. All that aside, I’m craving some good fish and am looking for some recommendations for some quality fish fries in St. Louis County.

So far, I’ve found some info here, but it’s 10 years old. It recommends (among others):

St. Gerard Majella in Kirkwood

St. Joan of Arc in South St. Louis

St. Peter Parish in Kirkwood

If you know of a church, parish or restaurant that has good fried fish, please leave a comment with the details.

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]]>This story has been out there for a few days now, but saw this in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Basically, Charter is filing for bankruptcy. I mention this, because if you have service through Charter, including a charter.net e-mail address, you may want to consider using an ISP Independent E-Mail Address.

I haven’t heard if service will be affected through this bankruptcy filing, but anything is possible.

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I am a large fan of the radio program “The ITD Morning After” on 1380 AM in St. Louis. 1380 AM has a terribly weak frequency. To compensate, the audio content from each show is put up daily on www.insidestl.com. (Sidenote, I’m a believer that every radio program ought to be available online. This would be great for archival purposes, higher audience loyalty and to allow their audience to listen at their convenience, but I digress.)

When I first started listening, insidestl.com was running on WordPress and it had a podcast and I gave little thought to the daily task of downloading the audio files to get them on my Zune (yes, I’m one of the 5 people that has a Zune). I used an app called FeedReader was able to download all the audio files from the site’s main RSS feed. Then the site transitioned to a DotNetNuke (DNN) platform that will referred to as the ITX debacle.

The ITX debacle removed functionality and ultimately left a lot of folks (message boarders namely) wishing they could go back to the old system. I preferred the old system, but only because the new version of the site has not provided a podcast. The audio files are still uploaded each day, but it has required me to download them manually.

Post ITX Debacle, I’ve gotten around having to download the audio files individually using the DownloadThemAll (DTA) FireFox add-on. That has worked okay; it provides a single button click to download all files and I didn’t have to put too much thought into it. But I still had to think about it and remember each day to use DTA to get the files, which was just too much.

Now short of continuing to wish that www.insidestl.com would provide a podcast, I started looking for an automatic method to download the content. A short search led me here, which subsequently led me here.

The end result? I have a fully automatic method for downloading audio from insidstl.com

Create a new scheduled task that executes insidestl.cmd at the time of your liking. Audio files are usually uploaded by 11:00 am in my experience, but I scheduled mine for 3pm.

You now have a fully automatic method to download that day’s audio with no thought or action required. This will download the files to c:\wget directory. If you’d prefer the files to end up in a different directory, modify step 5 above to include a move command to your preferred directory.

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UPDATE (2/4/2010):

If you happen to be looking for a web host, and don’t to pay a lot for it. Then check out Lunarpages. I moved all my sites to them a while back and have been impressed with both their value and support.